My sleeping pad held air! For someone who’s never successfully patched a tire in her entire life, this is a HUGE victory. Every time I rolled over during the night, I thought, “There’s air in my pad! Thank you Universe!”

We slept solidly, out of bear country, on flat ground, no threat of rain (how many times have we incorrectly said that one before?), and warm. I love warm. We woke up and from the depths of our sleeping bags agreed, “Let’s have breakfast.”

We then laid there for 15 more minutes until I said, “Are you going to go get our breakfast?” We have clearly defined jobs in the morning, which in summary is: Scott gets breakfast from the tree or bikes, Scott makes me breakfast, I eat breakfast from the cocoon of my sleeping bag while telling Scott how wonderful he is. He’s a total enabler of my lazy mornings.

“I was hoping that if I laid here long enough, you’d get hungry enough to go get the oats,” he replied.

Not a chance. Our morning routine went back to normal.

Neon and Onnamove walked by as we were eating, ready to get the four miles down to the highway done so that they could call the Mountain View Motel and get a ride into Lima.

After packing up and coasting down the hill, we caught them less than 10 minutes after we started. Bikes are pretty awesome that way. We chatted for a bit before pulling away, as we were planning on riding the 20 miles into Lima and wanted to make breakfast.

On the highway, we took the frontage road on the wrong side of the freeway, had to hop the fence, scamper across 4 lanes, ride the freeway for a mile, exit to Monida (I think it should be called Monaho) at the border of Montana and Idaho, got back on the frontage and spent the next 20 minutes making up names for other border towns. There were some good ones.

The frontage road led something to be desired with surface quality, but in the name of scouting a CDT bike route, we stayed on it instead of jumping multiple fences to ride on the nearly empty freeway.

Neon and Onna beat us in by 5 minutes and we all went to Jan’s Cafe for breakfast. Glorious breakfast.

Then it was a typical nero day: Pick up bounce box, catch up on 3 days worth of interneting, work a bit, go get lunch (the sub shop in Lima has amazing shakes – the chocolate-huckleberry one won our hearts), doodle around, go to Jan’s for dinner, sleep. Lima’s sort of cool. Lots of interesting people to talk to with some pretty crazy life stories.

We fell asleep listening to rain pound the roof of our little cabin room and lighting flash all around. It was a good night to be indoors.

Day 82

We’d planned a zero in Lima because Scott hadn’t really planned our route north of here. Or, more accurately, he hadn’t really figured out where we could resupply since it’s looking like a week or so of riding with no real towns anywhere close to the route from here to Butte. I like zero days as I can work a bit, blog a bit, play on the internet a bit, and hopefully watch some bad TV.

We wandered over to Jan’s for breakfast and found Neon and Onna there. Also Tucson residents, we traded Tucson stories, talking about timing and weather conditions on the trail (they got hammered seemingly non-stop), and drinking way too much coffee while the waitress refused to acknowledge our existence and run our cards.

We worked until Scott announced hunger 2 hours later. Back to the sub shop for sandwiches and shakes. Back to the room for more screen time. Back to Jan’s for dinner.

Tomorrow, we set off for 3 days out to Jackson (there’s a hot spring there!), then another 2-ish nights to Wisdom or Wise River, and then a night or two to Butte where I’ll finally get new cables and housing. Did I mention I totally sprained by thumb when my left shifter seized in the Great Basin? It swelled up and everything. Injury #1 of the trip. Hopefully the last one.

Or, if we wake up to rain, which we very well might, I hear the sub shop has good shakes.